


a date with the devil

by cerago



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: DEBS AU, F/F, I'm so sorry, but also have no regrets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 12:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4435232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerago/pseuds/cerago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Chloe wanted was to study music in New York; then she took the SAT and Barden University came calling.<br/>(or, the Pitch Perfect/DEBS au you didn't know you wanted but got anyway)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time I promised myself I would never write fanfiction, and then Pitch Perfect 2 happened and I fell into a pile of trash and now here we are. 
> 
> I'm assuming everyone reading this has seen DEBS and so probably won't going to spend a whole lot of time developing setting (but if you haven't - superspies in plaid skirts. Also go watch it asap). Also, this is going to stick pretty close to the plot because Beca and Chloe are basically the Lucy and Amy of a capella, but there will of course be some divergence because otherwise it would be boring.
> 
> Here we go.

“Chloe! Phone!”

Aubrey sounds stressed, and it’s only 8 but Chloe can tell she’s already out of patience. Emily’s probably lost her gun again.

“Got it!” she calls back, before Aubrey’s voice can climb to octaves previously unknown to humankind. “Also, tell Emily to check her laundry basket!” She hits the speaker button on the house phone, tossing it on her bed while she straightens the knot in her tie. It’s Tom again. _Shit_.

“Why won’t you answer my calls?” he asks, petulantly, and Chloe sighs.

“Tom, I told you. It’s over.”

“You broke up with me over _text_? Really, Chloe? After ten months?”

“I'm not talking about this anymore.”

“But—”

Chloe hangs up, starting as Aubrey shouts at her to hurry up and tucking her gun into her purse as she runs to join her friends.

\--

“I broke up with Tom,” Chloe shouts over the noise of the wind during the drive to campus.

“Really? Why?” Emily asks from the backseat (and Chloe chooses to ignore Aubrey’s scoffed “Finally” and Stacie’s comment about “letting a piece of man like that go to waste” in favor of answering her).

“I just wasn’t in love,” she says, “and it’s my last year. I want something real, you know?”

Emily nods like she knows exactly what Chloe is going through (she totally doesn't - sometimes Chloe can't believe Emily’s actually a senior, she has to mother the kid constantly) and opens her mouth, probably to say something awkward and vaguely comforting, before she's cut off by the car jerking to a halt.

"Come on, DEBS. Amy has some top secret, vitally important information for us," Aubrey informs them, leading the way into the café, where their (possibly certifiably insane) supervisor is waiting for them.

\--

"She's back in town? Oh my god, no way. I'm writing my thesis on her!" Chloe all but shrieks in her excitement, earning a glare from Aubrey and a disapproving sniff from Ms. Petri (Barden’s chancellor; she knows more classified secrets than Gretchen Wieners, and is the highest-ranking member of their entire organization. Chloe is still a little shell-shocked that she’s actually _here_ , coming to brief them on their latest high-profile target in person instead of sending Amy like usual). "Sorry," she says quickly, doing her best to look remorseful.

"Wait, I'm confused." Emily says (of course she is), "who's Beca Mitchell?"

"Remember The Professor? We learned about him in History of Crime 115A last year? Leader of the biggest crime ring of the 90s? She's his daughter, took control of his empire when he fell off the map in the late 2000’s. Top of the game with regard to counterfeiting, portrait smuggling, and diamond theft. She was behind the plot to sink Australia in '09. One of the most notorious super-villains of the present day," Chloe rambles, just catching the "she's so cool" on the tip of her tongue when she notices the rest of the table staring at her. "Um. Yeah."

"But that's not the worst part," Aubrey adds.

"Oh yeah, I forgot!" Chloe says, widening her eyes at Emily for dramatic effect (the other girl looks acceptably terrified). "No one has ever fought her... and _lived_."

"Yes, yes," Ms. Petri says. "So. Beca Mitchell is back in town, and since you four are top squad, I'm putting you in charge of apprehending her. Amy will fill you in on the details. Don't disappoint, ladies! Remember: Discipline. Energy. Beauty. Strength." She disappears in a hissing beam and puff of smoke.

"Alright, bitches," Amy says, leaning forward over the table and clicking a button on the center console to bring up the infographic. "So, as you’re hopefully aware by now, Beca Mitchell, supervillain, is back in the area. Our intel suggests that she's here to meet this woman, Kommissar." Another click. "She's a German assassin, seems way too impressive to agree to a meeting with someone who would even _consider_ sinking Australia." Amy shivers dramatically. "Anyway, the Australia-hater and her German friend will be at the French restaurant on 19th at twenty-one-hundred hours tonight. Now, this is just a reconnaissance mission; learn why she's here, what she wants with Kommissar, if she has any further plans for Australia. Do not, under any circumstances, engage with the target. You're all graduating soon, and we don't need someone dying on a mission or anything. Bad publicity, even though you all did sign liability waivers when you enrolled at Barden."

Aubrey nods sharply. "Right, Amy. No contact. You have my word."

* * *

Twelve miles away at an undisclosed location, the one and only Beca Mitchell, notorious criminal mastermind (though Jesse flat-out refuses to call her that) sits back in her chair, contemplating the blonde on the screen in front of her. “How did you say you found her again?” she asks Jesse.

“I have my ways,” he says, grinning broadly at her, though he makes a show of sobering when she glares daggers at him. “That guy with the underground speakeasy in Atlanta put me in touch. Remember, the rich guy with the all the geese in his mansion?”

“And you took _his_ advice?”

“Come _on_ , Beca, you need to get back out there! It’s been almost two years since you were dumped. And you haven’t been on a single date since then.”

Her glare deepens. “I was not _dumped_.”

Jesse raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, and Benji doesn’t like _Star Wars_. Please, Becaw? I put a lot of effort into arranging this. And Kommissar came all the way from Germany. At least just go - I promise if you don’t like her, I won’t force you into any movie marathons for the next month.”

Beca groans, sinking further into the chair. “ _Fine_. But make it two months.”

* * *

At exactly 20:57 that evening, Chloe finds herself hanging from the ceiling of the restaurant, squashed between Stacie, who's filing her nails, and Emily, who won't shut up about when Beca Mitchell is going to show up and what her no-doubt sinister motives might be.

"Wait - is that the German?" asks Stacie, who has somehow magically swapped her nail file for a pair of binoculars and is now staring intently at the crowded restaurant below them.

"What? Where?" Emily says, gaze frantically sweeping downwards, all speculation about the theoretical secret cache of fine art stashed in the city a century ago by a long-dead crime lord forgotten. Chloe breathes a quiet sigh of relief.

Stacie points, and Chloe follows the trajectory of her arm to a blonde woman who, even from their position fifteen yards up, appears tall and menacing. Next to her, the brunette that's just arrived seems utterly tiny.

"Is that her?" Chloe hisses at Stacie, unable to take her eyes off the figures.

Stacie nods. Below them, the two women, after an interaction that had made the blonde one laugh, are taking their seats.

“All right,” Emily says, nodding, “surveillance. Let’s go.”

Stacie, a pair of headphones over her ears, just nods vaguely.

“What are they talking about?” Emily asks after a brief pause, seemingly unable to shut up for more than ten consecutive seconds.

“Oh, you know,” Stacie says, “killing, maiming, world domination. The usual.”

Chloe seizes the binoculars from Stacie, looking intently down at the table.

"Wow," she says. "That's Beca Mitchell? She's..."

"What?" Emily asks.

 _Beautiful. Intriguing. Not what I expected._ "Short," Chloe says.

"Didn't you already know that?" Stacie asks, "You've read her case file, like, fifty times."

"I guess so," Chloe replies, "but it's different in person. I never thought I'd actually see her in real life, you know?"

Stacie tilts her head, opening her mouth to respond.

"Ladies!" Aubrey hisses, glaring daggers at Stacie. "Focus!"

"Sorry!" Stacie grimaces, turning her attention back toward the table below them, but Aubrey’s reprimand causes Emily to jerk slightly, bumping the entire line and knocking loose Stacie’s nail file. All four of them watch in horror as she lunges and misses, and it falls end over end and straight into the soup of one Beca Mitchell.

"Oops," Stacie says.

* * *

"So," Beca says, looking up at Kommissar. Even when they're both sitting, the other woman towers above her. (She wonders again why she let Jesse talk her into this, particularly after she had greeted the German with a supremely awkward handshake and a "Hello there, you gorgeous... specimen." The night is already a disaster, and they haven't even gotten drinks yet.) "You're an assassin."

"That's right," Kommissar says.

"What's that like?" Beca asks. God, even to herself she sounds stupid.

"Lots of killing," Kommissar replies, seeming - thankfully - amused by Beca's incredible lack of conversational skills. "Sometimes maiming. You know, like the cutting off of limbs. A hand, for example, or perhaps an arm if the pay is particularly good." Her gaze lingers on Beca's own arm, and Beca fights the urge to flee.

Thankfully, a waiter chooses this exact moment to take their orders, and Beca is spared the necessity of a response. She orders wine for the both of them, as well as the first thing she sees on the menu (soup. She thinks it might be some sort of onion, but in all honesty she's a little preoccupied with what seems to be a thinly veiled threat against her limbs).

"Um," she manages to get out, once the waiter has disappeared (this evening is going just _swimmingly_ ), "what else do you do? You know, besides cutting off the limbs of innocent people?"

Kommissar grins menacingly at her discomfort, but at Beca’s query her eyes light up. "I'm the leader of Das Sound Machine," she says. "a German collective operating in concert to create sonic mastery. It is - what do you Americans call it - a capella," she hastens to add, at Beca's blank look, and, when Beca still fails to display any sort of recognition "singing, but all the instruments are purely vocals."

She continues, detailing their world domination and subsequent victory at the World Championships of A Capella (something Beca had no idea was even a Thing, much less the sort of thing that would necessitate a World Championship), and Beca finds herself, much to her surprise and despite being generally terrified, mildly interested.

"Enough about me," Kommissar says finally as their food arrives, "tell me about yourself, tiny maus."

Beca opens her mouth to speak (first of all, she’s not _that_ tiny), when suddenly there's a splashing noise and she and Kommissar are both wiping the city's finest French Onion soup off their faces. Digging a spoon into the sad remnants of her meal, Beca extricates - after several embarrassing failed attempts - a small, thin piece of metal, which she vaguely recognizes as a nail file. She looks up. _Shit_.

 _“Shit,”_ Beca says, and then several things happen at once.

Kommissar somersaults across the table and picks it up to shield the two of them while the four superspies dangling from the ceiling descend, guns out and blazing. Beca draws her own gun to return fire, making a mental note to yell at Jesse later ( _discreet_ , Jesse? Really?) as, managing to dodge the few bullets not deflected by the table, she and Kommissar make it to the relative safety of the bar.

"Listen, tiny maus," Kommissar shouts over the sounds of gunshots, breaking glass, and shouts clamoring for their surrender, "I do not think this will work out. You are very small and adorable, like a miniature elf, but you also appear to be wanted by this plaid-skirted girl group and this whole situation is a bit of a heated mess."

Beca isn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved by this news, so she settles for her standard dodge-the-question tactic, tossing a grenade over the bar and shouting "Duck!" in lieu of a response.

"If you ever find yourself in Germany without your, how do you say, 'groupies,'" a low voice sounds in her ear, "call me." And Beca turns in time to catch Kommissar tossing her a wink before dashing off through the chaos left in the wake of the explosion. Beca stares after her for a second, stunned, before jerking to her senses and diving through a doorway to her left and down a staircase and into the basement, where, at the end of a long narrow corridor, she can see the neon green of an exit sign glowing faintly.

* * *

As the dust settles and the DEBS realize that their targets are no longer present, Aubrey calls for a halt. "Alright, ladies, regroup. Chloe, you take Emily and circle around the back; Stacie and I will go out the front."

"Wait!" Emily says, looking panicked, "what if we actually find her? Amy said no contact, remember?"

Aubrey breathes out heavily through her nose. "Emily, out of the four of us, who won't be graduating at the end of the year?"

"Me," Emily says quickly.

"And why is that?"

"I haven't earned my stripes," Emily says, "because I haven't shown bravery in the face of unspeakable danger."

"That's right," Aubrey says, and, with the air of explaining simple logic to a five-year-old, "now, don't you think the subdual and subsequent capture of Beca Mitchell might qualify?"

Emily nods, chagrined, and Aubrey takes a step back, apparently satisfied. "All right, DEBS. Head out!"

She and Stacie quickly disappear, and Chloe tugs on Emily's elbow, urging her in the opposite direction.

They make their way silently through a narrow, twisting hallway and emerge into the open air of a deserted parking lot. After looking quickly around and determining that Beca Mitchell is _not_ , in fact, lying in wait behind the nearest car to murder the both of them in cold blood, Chloe relaxes slightly. “Okay,” she says. “You stay here in case she comes out, I’m going to go check in there.” She jerks her head at a door standing propped open next to the dumpsters, and Emily looks alarmed.

“What if she actually shows up?”

“ _Stripes_ , Emily,” Chloe says, fixing the other girl with an even and (she hopes) calming look.

“Okay,” Emily says, setting her jaw, and Chloe leaves her there with her gun drawn, not looking back as she disappears into the building.

She descends quickly to the building’s sublevel and spots an exit at the end of a long row of shipping containers. Heading towards it, gun drawn, she doesn’t notice the set of footsteps down a similar aisle to her right.

Twenty feet away, she breaks into a run, then,

“Ouch!”

Scrambling to her feet, she offers a hand to the girl still on the ground, pulling her upright before noticing the mussed brown hair, black-lined blue eyes, mouth set into a permanent scowl, and, “Fuck,” Chloe says, at the exact same time as Beca Mitchell.

“You are under arrest,” Chloe says, pointing her gun carefully at the supervillain in front of her, though the sentiment is undermined slightly by the fact said supervillain’s gun is aimed back at Chloe. “You have the right to remain silent-”

“Seriously?” Beca Mitchell asks, raising one perfect eyebrow. “You’re reading me my rights?”

“-anything you say can be used against you in a court of law,” Chloe continues, undeterred.

She trails off, and the two of them spend a good five (long, uncomfortable) seconds just staring at each other, neither willing to drop their gun first.

“Okay, so here’s the thing,” Chloe says, breaking the silence (Beca Mitchell’s other eyebrow joins the first halfway up her forehead), “I’m not really interested in dying today.”

“Yeah,” Beca Mitchell says, “same. Obviously.”

“So, I was thinking… why don’t you put your gun down?”

“What, so you can arrest me? Or, like, I don’t know, _shoot_ me? Yeah, not gonna happen.”

“Well, technically,” Chloe says, drawing on all the negotiation tactics Aubrey has been trying (and, for the most part, failing) to impart upon her for the past three years, “you’re the criminal and I’m the cop, so technically I’m more trustworthy?”

“Maybe,” Beca Mitchell says, face dropping back into the trademark scowl Chloe is so familiar with (from the hours she’s spent studying the few photos in the library, _for_ _research_ ) “except I was totally minding my own business on some stupid blind date, so I’d argue that this entire situation is really your fault.”

Chloe is so taken aback she lets her gun drop.

“Wait, you were on a blind date?”

“Um. Yeah?”

“With that scary German chick?”

Beca Mitchell lifts her eyes defiantly to Chloe’s. “So what if I was?”

“Nothing, I just didn’t know you were, um…”

“Bisexual, actually,” Beca Mitchell mutters, “but why in the hell would you know?”

Chloe opens her mouth a few times, but no words come out. This meeting is going absolutely nothing like she imagined it would (for starters, there’s a lot less heroic combat, ending with her, wounded but triumphant, leading a captured Beca Mitchell into headquarters, and a lot more falling over and putting her metaphorical foot in her mouth). Finally, she manages a “Wow. This _really_ torpedoes my thesis.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m, um, writing a term paper on you. For this class? Capes and Capers, Gender Reconstruction and the Criminal Mastermind? It’s actually a really popular course.”

Beca Mitchell has the gall to look _amused_.

“But it’s hard,” Chloe continues, “because there are only, like, second- and third-hand accounts, because no one has ever actually met you. Seriously, do you ever leave the house? Or your evil lair, I guess?”

Beca Mitchell snorts. “I mean, Jesse would say _no_ , but… And no one has met me until _now_ , because I might be mistaken but we seem to be having a conversation.”

“Yeah,” Chloe says. “Until now.”

There’s another long, charged pause, but where the first was full of an awkward reluctance to shoot the other, this one is different. If Chloe didn’t know better, she’d say it was practically _affectionate_.

“I’m sorry,” Beca Mitchell says, and there’s a small half-smile on her face now. Combined with her stature, it makes her almost cute. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Chloe,” Chloe says, hastily tucking her gun under her arm to shake the other woman’s hand. (She’s struck by how unexpectedly soft and warm it is, and then quickly and forcibly ejects the thought from her brain.) “Chloe Beale, DEBS Sector One.”

“Beca Mitchell.”

“Yeah, I know,” Chloe says before she can stop herself. “Sorry. It’s really nice to meet you.”

“It’s really nice to meet you too, Chloe Beale,” Beca Mitchell says, and her eyes linger on Chloe’s face for just a second too long. Her smile has grown, tugging at both corners of her mouth, and Chloe feels her own lips curve upwards in response. Before she can say anything else, however, Aubrey’s shouts echo behind her.

“You know,” Beca Mitchell says, soft smile still in place, “you could just let me go.”

Chloe bites her lip. “I _really_ couldn’t.”

Accompanied by the eyebrow quirk that she seems to have spent hours in the mirror perfecting: “Are you sure?”

The shouts from behind Chloe grow louder, Emily’s and Stacie’s voices now audible below Aubrey’s bellowing, and Chloe glances over her shoulder towards the noise. When she turns back around, Beca Mitchell is gone, a smattering of diamonds across the floor the only indication that Chloe didn’t imagine the whole thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are super appreciated (but like, even if you just hit the kudos button I'll probably love you forever)
> 
> Also, come yell at me over on tumblr.com at queerpeggycarters


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bar scene. That's all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My excellent trash partner-slash-beta finally proofread this so at long last here it is (I know everyone's been holding their breath. You're welcome). Here we have Beca being smitten and awkward, Chloe being surprisingly tolerant of Beca's smitten awkwardness, and Emily being ever-so-slightly less annoying than Janet. Have fun.

Beca dashes out the back door of the restaurant, diving into the passenger seat of the idling Cadillac on the curb. The second she slams the door behind her, Jesse hits the gas, jerking forward and putting as much distance between them and the still-chaotic restaurant as possible.

“I am so sorry,” Jesse says once they’re a good two miles away. “Fucking DEBS, this was supposed to be low-key… What?” he asks, when he notices Beca grinning stupidly at him.

“I met someone.”

Jesse slams on the brakes, triumphant smile spreading across his face. “I knew it! I thought, the a capella thing was kind of weird, like it’s basically organized nerd singing, but you like music so I thought you could roll with--”

“Jesse, no,” Beca cuts him off. “I mean, Kommissar was actually… not that bad, but the DEBS scared her off. It’s, well... what do you know about a Chloe Beale?”

Jesse’s grin fades slightly. “The girl from the smuggling ring? ...no. Um, the manager of that Fortune 500 retreat that was actually a front for training assassins?” The grin slides entirely off his face, quickly replaced by a look of pure horror. “Chloe… Beale?” he chokes out.

Beca grimaces at him, widening her eyes in her best “sorry but also not really” face. It’s the exact same face she’d worn after Benji had caught her playing with his authentic used-on-the-set-of- _Return of the Jedi_ lightsabers.

“Red hair?” Jesse continues. _“Plaid skirt?”_

The corner of Beca’s mouth twitches.

“She’s a DEB,” Jesse all but shouts. “And not only is she a DEB, Beca, she is _the_ DEB. She’s the perfect score!”

“Wait, what?”

Jesse starts the car again, though in his distress he’s barely watching the road as it lurches forward. “Chloe Beale is the only person to get a perfect score on the secret test in the SAT. Actually, she took the SAT twice, so she’s like doubly the perfect score. Perfect score, perfect spy. She is literally their poster child.”

“Well, looking like that she certainly belongs on a poster,” Beca mutters, and then, when Jesse gives her a _look_ , smirks at him. “Also, their poster child doesn’t know it yet, but she’s into me.” She reaches between them and pulls the emergency brake, jerking the car to a halt and causing Jesse to bang his face on the steering wheel.

“What the hell, Beca?” he begins, rubbing his forehead, but she’s already clambering over the center console and into the driver’s seat on top of him, pulling the car into a U-turn and speeding back towards the city. “Where on earth do you think you’re going?”

Beca grins (though the expression is lost on Jesse, who’s currently sputtering around a mouthful of her hair). “Back.”

\--

Beca turns off the headlights as she pulls onto Chloe’s street and coasts to a stop in front of the house. Thank God Jesse and Benji had made sure to thoroughly research the entirety of the hundred-mile radius of Barden campus, including the location of every Barden-owned property and a list of its defenses.

She takes a deep breath, heart suddenly racing. “Pass me that lightsaber thing,” she tells Jesse. Said second-in-command had forced her to stop fifty yards from where she’d commandeered the wheel so he could extricate himself from beneath her and is now in the passenger seat, looking every bit the reluctant sidekick.

The crease between his eyebrows, prominent the entire duration of their drive, deepens. _“Beca.”_

She sighs. “ _Fine_. Pass me that incredible laser-based portable technology that you and Benji spent three months developing, but somehow still haven’t come up with a name for yet because he keeps insisting on something that acronyms to ‘lightsaber.’ Also,” she continues, pulling herself out of the car and walking around it to the sidewalk, “I think in light of that fact, ‘lightsaber thing’ is actually a reasonable name.”

Jesse glares at her, but he rummages in the duffel bag at his feet and passes her the gadget out the window. “This is still stupid.”

Beca winks at him before turning and expertly cutting her way through the force field that surrounds the house and separates her from Chloe Beale. Once through, she scans for heat signatures and realizes that, _fuck_ , Chloe Beale obviously lives with other DEBS and she has no idea which room is hers - though she can probably rule out the one where her scanner is currently displaying two people basically on top of each other. Resigning herself to a process of elimination, she carefully scales the side of the house towards the nearest bedroom window. She pulls herself to just above the windowsill, ducking when she catches sight of several posters of Chris Evans and a few bars of what seems to be an original, half-finished song about flashlights. Definitely not Chloe (though for a moment, clinging to the side of the house by her fingertips, she wonders why, exactly, she’s so convinced the Chris Evans posters and flashlights _aren’t_ Chloe’s. And then she considers just how creepy it is that she’s trying to sneak into a heavily protected house for a girl that she’s interacted with for a total of, like, four minutes, but decides to postpone these thoughts for a time when she’s not hanging twenty feet above the ground).

Thankfully, the next window she peers into is Chloe’s, the girl in question sitting at a desk with her back to the window. With far less grace than originally intended, Beca pulls herself up and topples through the window, and the other girl bites back a shriek as she leaps to her feet, whipping around. She’s clearly getting ready for bed - her gun is lying on the bedside table, out of reach, and she’s ditched her plaid skirt and tie for a soft-looking red shirt and sweats, hair loose around her shoulders. She looks amazing, and Beca swallows hard as she - finally - manages to scramble to her feet.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Chloe hisses, eyes wide.

Beca eyes dart to Chloe’s face and then away, mouth suddenly dry. In the light of a room that isn’t a dingy, dimly-lit basement, she notices just how blue Chloe’s eyes are. It’s not helping.

“Well, um,” Beca scrambles desperately, searching the brief conversation they’d had for any possible reason for her being in Chloe’s room in the middle of the night. “I was thinking, about your paper?” ( _Really, Beca?_ her brain jeers, unhelpful as always. _You’re talking about her schoolwork?_ )

Chloe looks confused. “My thesis?”

“Yeah,” Beca says. The damage is done, so she figures she might as well go with it and hope her harebrained scheme works. “Um, it just seems silly for you to be doing all this outdated, secondhand research when you could come straight to the source.”

“Being you.”

Beca makes a valiant attempt at her trademark confident smirk. It comes out as barely a grimace, and she settles instead for a raised eyebrow. “Come out with me and I’ll let you ask me anything.”

Chloe’s eyes dart from Beca’s face to her gun, lying ten feet away on her bedside table. Beca, who hasn’t looked away from Chloe’s eyes for the last several minutes, takes several quick steps, planting all five feet of herself directly between Chloe and the firearm, and Chloe’s eyes snap back to Beca’s face. She frowns. “I can’t come out with you.”

“Why not?”

“Like, a zillion reasons!”

Beca grins. Flustering Chloe seems to have returned a bit of the confidence that had previously appeared to have been left back on the sidewalk with Jesse. “Well, a zillion technically isn’t a number, so does that mean you have no reason not to?”

Chloe flushes slightly, brilliant blue eyes narrowing. “What are you, five?” The moment the words pass her lips, she claps a hand over her mouth. On anyone else, the action would look stupid and overdramatic, but she somehow manages to make it endearing. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry I said that, please don’t kill me.”

“Since you just so clearly wounded my pride, will you make up for it by coming with me? Just for a bit - I’ll bring you home safe and sound. Scout’s honor.” Beca holds up three fingers in a mock salute, other hand over her heart.

Instead of responding, Chloe pulls out a crossbow ( _Seriously?_ Where did she even _find_ a crossbow?), leveling it at Beca. “Get out.”

“Seriously? You’re going to shoot me?”

“If you don’t leave right now!” Chloe’s voice shoots up several octaves upon the threat, and it’s this detail that keeps Beca where she is, biting her lip and _really_ hoping she doesn’t end up with a crossbow bolt through the shoulder (or, God forbid, the _face_ ) for her trouble.

After a long pause, Chloe sighs. The tip of the crossbow drops a few degrees. “Promise you won’t murder me?”

“Yes,” Beca says, tension draining out of her body, instantly replaced by nerves because _oh my God this beautiful government spy is actually agreeing to go somewhere with her instead of shooting her with a crossbow_. “Absolutely. Great. Excellent. Let’s go.”

Chloe glares at her but acquiesces, grabbing a jean jacket off the back of her door before leading the way out of the room.

\--

As they leave the house, there’s a noise to their left, and a second later Beca has a very tall, very terrified girl pinned against the wall of the house by her throat.

She’s not entirely sure how it happens, but said girl ( _Emily_ , she’s pretty sure Chloe said), ends up squashed uncomfortably in the backseat with Jesse.

Beca takes a deep breath, fingers flexing against the steering wheel. _Here we go._

* * *

Chloe can’t believe she actually _agreed_ to this. She had had a _crossbow_ pointed at Beca Mitchell, for God’s sake - if she couldn’t manage to arrest her, why hadn’t she at least made her leave? But no, instead she - and Emily, for some reason - are in Beca Mitchell’s car with both the supervillain herself and her sidekick (who bears an unerring resemblance to a puppy), headed towards some unknown, ominous, probably dangerous destination. If she had to think about it, she might say her presence in Beca Mitchell’s car has something to do with the way Beca Mitchell had looked at her - lower lip caught between her teeth and dark eyes boring into Chloe, seemingly oblivious to the deadly weapon leveled at her. And maybe something to do with the way it had twisted Chloe’s stomach, not unpleasantly, just a little bit. She doesn’t think about it.

“Where are we going?” she had asked at some point, a few minutes into the drive. Beca Mitchell had just smiled mysteriously.

“You’ll see.”

Now they’re speeding down a dark tunnel, and Chloe might be a mediocre driver at best but she’s pretty sure a barrier that says _DEAD END_ is _not_ something that one ever wants to be heading towards, particularly at the speed they’re currently traveling.

Emily screams.

Chloe doesn’t (though she grips the side of the seat so hard she’s pretty sure she’s left permanent fingernail marks in the leather), but before her heartbeat can accelerate past the “target rate” of an Aubrey Posen Cardio Workout they’ve burst through the holographic wall and into open air. Letting out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, she looks around. They seem to have left the city, car parked in a grassy lot next to a large, graffitied building she gathers from the pumping music and seedy-looking people loitering about is some sort of club for criminals and their undesirable associates. Before she can confirm her hypothesis, however, Beca Mitchell and her sidekick are pulling themselves out of the car, and Chloe hastens to follow suit.

“Wait!” Emily says. She seems frozen in place, knees squashed up against the back of the passenger seat. “What about me?”

“Come in, I guess,” Chloe says with a shrug. She’s not 100% sure what protocol is for voluntarily accompanying a target to a nightclub.

“Can’t I just stay in the car?”

“Sure, as long as you don’t mind if one of those guys comes over and talks to you.” She gestures at the cluster of people a few yards away. One of them hasn’t taken off their chrome motorcycle helmet, visor still down, and another appears to have attached large spikes to the shoulders of their leather jacket.

Emily gets tangled in the seatbelt in her rush to get out of the car.

As the two girls make their way to the club’s entrance, where Beca Mitchell & Co. (Chloe really needs to learn puppy boy’s name) are waiting for them, Chloe catches the tail end of their conversation.

“...don’t know, okay? Literally. No idea,” Beca Mitchell is saying.

“Okay, fine,” puppy boy replies, rolling his eyes. “I texted Benji, so he’s meeting us here. Also, hello!” He turns to greet Chloe and Emily, flashing them a smile. His uncanny likeness to a young golden retriever becomes even more pronounced. “We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Jesse, Beca’s second-in-command and the brains of her operation. Along with this guy.” He reaches his arm out and seems to grasp said guy into being out of thin air, clapping him on the shoulder. “This is Benji. Benji, Chloe and Emily. And you know Beca. As you may have gathered, I am in charge of all introductions and group interactions, because Beca is incapable of social niceties.”

“I’m aware,” Benji says. “Hey!” He raises a hand awkwardly.

“Um, hello?” Beca Mitchell pipes up for the first time. “Standing right here?”

“Yes,” Jesse says. “So, now that introductions are over, shall we go in? I’m currently the reigning foosball champion of the Pacific Northwest, if anyone is foolish enough to challenge me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Beca Mitchell says (this is clearly a point that has been made before), no longer paying attention as she leads the way into the club.

Once inside, she grabs two beers off a passing waiter, making eye contact with Chloe and jerking her head towards one of the tables in the corner. “Shall we?”

Chloe looks back worriedly at Emily.

“She’ll be fine,” Beca Mitchell shouts over the thumping music. “Jesse and Benji will probably make her play, like, twelve games of foosball. And people know them, so no one will give her shit.”

Slightly reassured, Chloe leaves Emily to her foosball and follows Beca Mitchell to a round booth in the back, occupied by four or five people who make a quick exit the second she looks at them. Being a notorious supervillain clearly has its perks.

Chloe slides onto the bench next to Beca Mitchell, who places a beer in front of her. “So,” Beca Mitchell says, “how long have you been a DEB?”

“Look,” Chloe says, “Ms. Mitchell…?”

“Beca. Oh my God, wow. Please never call me that again.”

“Beca, then. I’m not trying to be rude, but why exactly are we here?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” Beca Mitchell says. “The DEBS have been after me for years, I thought I should get to know one of their own, you know?” Chloe doesn’t, really, but she nods anyway. “So,” Beca Mitchell continues, cheeks slightly pinker than they had been when they sat down (is she _nervous?_ ). “Tell me about your thesis.”

Chloe picks at the varnish on the table. Despite not shutting up about the thing for months, she’s suddenly reluctant to talk about her paper. “It’s stupid.”

“Come on. I brought you all the way here. Give me _something_.”

“Well,” Chloe looks up, though still avoids eye contact. “I guess my central hypothesis is that, um, as a woman operating in a male-dominated field, you felt the need to sort of overcompensate, by being even more ruthless and diabolical than your established male counterparts.” She trails off, meeting Beca Mitchell’s gaze for the first time.

Beca Mitchell’s eyes haven’t left her face since she started talking. “Continue.”

“And I think,” Chloe stumbles over her words as she tries to present her ideas in the gentlest way possible. “I think these psychological factors have combined to create a sort of, um, emotional void, in which you’re incapable of loving, or… being loved? Sorry,” she adds quickly. Telling her theories to her laptop, safe in the seclusion of her room with Beca Mitchell an unknown persona wreaking havoc somewhere else in the world is very different than telling them to her subject’s face. As she’s been speaking, Beca Mitchell’s expression has twisted from something mildly curious to what can only be described as a scowl.

“See, that is _so_ not true,” Beca Mitchell says.

“Which part?”

“I’m open to love! I am!” Something in the way she says it suggests that this is not the first time she’s been presented with the concepts outlined in Chloe’s thesis.

“Sorry,” Chloe says again, hoping she looks apologetic. “It’s just a theory.”

“Yeah, well, what do you know, anyway.” Beca Mitchell picks up her beer, taking a drink before staring moodily down the neck of the bottle.

“Literally nothing,” Chloe says, voice rising in pitch so it comes out like a question. Beca Mitchell glances up at her. “I just broke up with my boyfriend, like, fifteen hours ago.”

“I’m sorry, that sucks.” Beca Mitchell’s mouth twists in sympathy, and Chloe glances down at it involuntarily before jerking her eyes back up to dark blue ones. There’s a pause. “Why’d you break up with him?”

“I’m not sure.” Chloe chooses her words carefully. “He was nice, and cute, and I liked him, I just - I think love should be irresistable, you know? Like a drug. I think when it happens, you shouldn’t be able to help yourself.” Beca Mitchell’s face softens as Chloe speaks, and her lips quirk up on one side. It’s this tiny display of emotion that coaxes the next words out of Chloe’s mouth, and she looks carefully at the other woman. “I wanted… more.” Her words are followed by silence, which she breaks a second later. “I’m sorry, I’m babbling.”

“No,” Beca Mitchell says quickly, soft smile still in place. “You’re good. This is good.”

“I just - “ Chloe runs a hand through her hair, “This is so weird. Why aren’t you killing me?”

“I keep my promises. Scout’s honor, remember? Besides, not really into that.”

“But you killed those ATF guys in Peru.”

“They died of ebola, I never even saw them.”

“What about that rebel gang in Canada?”

“That one was wolves, I think. Weird day. No idea why they all felt the need to wear maroon. It was like I was being hunted by some weird boy band.”

Chloe leans back in the booth. “Wow.”

“What?”

“It’s just… you’re _so_ not what I expected.”

Beca Mitchell raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, well I think that’s a good thing.”

“Yeah, again, sorry about that.” Chloe smiles at her, and then, before Beca Mitchell can think Chloe is warming to her _too_ much, she follows it up with, “So, what was up with Kommissar?”

Beca Mitchell groans, hand falling over her face. “Don’t even get me started--though actually, I have been on worse dates.”

Chloe’s answering laugh cuts through the thumping music around them.

\--

Half an hour later, Chloe’s heard about a drummer that kept drumsticks in her back pocket at all times “just in case” and seemed incapable of speaking at a volume lower than a shout, a guy that beatboxed under his breath the whole night and wouldn’t shut up about some weird hypothetical situation featuring Captain America and a shark, and one mortifyingly awkward date with _Jesse_ , and is now detailing her own  breakup with Tom. Sometime in the past thirty minutes, she and Beca have inched closer together, and Beca’s sitting with one arm over the back of the seat, leg drawn up against her chest. Chloe’s a quarter of the way into her second beer, and, being a notorious lightweight, is feeling the corresponding warmth build in her stomach. She cannot, for the life of her, figure out when exactly Beca Mitchell became just _Beca_ in her head.

“So, like, Tom wouldn’t stop calling me, and who even does that anymore? There are no emojis in a phone call! And I just felt like he didn’t quite _get_ me, you know? Do you ever feel like that? Like nobody understands you?”

“No, my emotions are an open book,” Beca deadpans. “Livetweeted and everything. Perfect for college students writing papers about the psychology of female criminality.”

Chloe laughs. “Oops.”

“Don’t worry about it, honestly.” Beca’s thumb brushes lightly over the back of Chloe’s neck.

Chloe looks away, then back, clear blue eyes darting across the room before finally stopping on Beca’s darker ones. “I’m really glad that I met you.”

Beca’s answering smile - the first full-on, can-see-every-tooth smile she’s given Chloe since they met - lights up her whole face. “I’m really glad I met you too.”

Her thumb brushes Chloe’s neck again, pausing against skin when the redhead’s eyelids flutter at the contact. Chloe bites her lip, noting Beca’s gaze dart down at the action. She stills when Beca leans forward, slowly, cautiously, and her eyes fall shut when Beca’s nose brushes lightly against her own.

Then...

“Oh my God!”

At Emily’s shriek, Chloe’s eyes snap open in time to catch Beca jerking quickly back, expression a mixture of annoyed and embarrassed. Her arm withdraws from behind Chloe, and they both turn towards the source of the interruption.

“She almost kissed you!” Emily is practically apoplectic, pointing from Beca to Chloe and back again.

Behind her, Benji is shifting from foot to foot anxiously. Jesse just looks amused. “You owe me fifty bucks.”

Chloe makes a “please calm down” face at Emily, and then flits her gaze across Jesse, to the bar, then down at her hands twisted together on the table. Anywhere but at Beca. “Take me home, please,” she chokes out.

Beca, thankfully, doesn’t push her, nodding and sliding out of the booth. Chloe follows, shaken and - if she’s honest with herself - slightly irritated with Emily for interrupting them.

\--

The drive back to the DEBS house is mostly silent, broken only briefly by Jesse extorting Emily into actually giving him the fifty bucks he claims he’s owed. Chloe spends the majority of it with her head pressed against the window, staring at the buildings flashing past them. Occasionally she glances over at Beca in the seat next to her, eyes kept resolutely forward as she drives. Once, the brunette meets her gaze and holds it, and Chloe quickly goes back to looking out the window, feigning an unusual amount of interest in the completely nondescript suburban houses they’re driving past until she feels Beca’s eyes return to the road ahead.

An excruciatingly uncomfortable amount of time later, they pull up to the curb down the block from their destination. Emily all but bolts from the car, tripping over an uneven bit of sidewalk in her haste, then waits impatiently several paces away as Chloe makes her own slower, significantly more graceful exit. Beca gets out as well, circling around the hood to stand facing Chloe with her hands stuffed awkwardly in her pockets (from inside the car, Chloe can hear Jesse as he climbs clumsily and noisily over the center console and into the front seat).

Beca chews her bottom lip, eyes flicking across the ground before she drags them up to meet Chloe’s. “Am I going to see you again?”

“You mean another clandestine meeting where I don’t arrest you?”

“Preferably, yeah.”

Chloe twists her mouth sideways, pretending not to notice when Beca’s gaze follows the movement. “I don’t know. I’m breaking, like, eight federal statutes just talking to you right now.”

“Sorry,” Beca says, sounding not at all sorry. She raises an eyebrow, phrasing her next words like a challenge. “Do you _want_ to see me again?”

Chloe opens her mouth, but before she can form any sort of sentence (she has no idea what she’s going to say anyway) Emily shouts “Chloe!” and she snaps her mouth shut, giving Beca an apologetic smile as she hurries away.

She hears Beca call, “I’ll find you!” as she walks with Emily back to the house.

“So,” Emily says, the minute Beca has gotten back in the car and slammed the door behind her. “What the hell was _that_?”

Chloe shrugs.

“Liar,” Emily accuses, though her tone is affectionate. “You are so into her. You were totally going to let her kiss you!”

Chloe ignores this, instead stopping on the sidewalk and turning towards Emily. “Don’t tell Aubrey about _any_ of this.”

“But--”

“DEBS Code Section I, Article II, DEBS will not consort with any known enemy of the state under penalty of treason. We’d both be in so much trouble.”

“I was not _consorting_!”

Chloe grins evilly. “Wrong. I know you gave Benji your phone number.” She pauses, then, thinking a bit more blackmail couldn’t hurt, adds, “Also, if you don’t tell, then _I_ won’t tell Aubrey about that time you got drunk and starting singing ‘Flashlight’ so loudly you almost blew our cover in Copenhagen.”

Emily’s eyes grow even wider than usual, and she nods.

“Okay,” Chloe says. “Good. Now come on.” She leads the way through the yard and up the front steps, where they come face-to-face with none other than Aubrey herself.

“Chloe! There you are! Where on earth were you, it’s almost three,” she says, wrapping her official Barden bathrobe more tightly around herself.

“Sorry,” Chloe says. “We went for a walk. I was just, um… really upset about Tom.”

Aubrey winces. “Shit, I forgot. If you ever need to talk about it, you know I’m here for you, right?” She lays a comforting hand on Chloe’s shoulder.

“I know, Bree,” Chloe says, smiling at her best friend. “Thanks, but I think right now I just need to go to bed.”

“We should all get to sleep, really,” Aubrey says, and accompanies Chloe and Emily upstairs, where they part on the landing with a quick “Goodnight.”

The minute Chloe’s door is shut behind her, she collapses into bed, letting out a heavy sigh. Piercing blue eyes and sarcastic, self-deprecating smirks swim through her head, which is still pounding in time with the club’s heavy bassline. If she closes her eyes, she can still feel Beca’s hand against the back of her neck, Beca’s breath ghosting over her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, kudos, etc are as-ever appreciated.
> 
> Again, come yell at me at queerpeggycarters on tumblr. I make trash edits sometimes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beca is awkward and robs a bank and Chloe makes questionable decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am aware it's been approximately 2874 years since I last posted to this, but I was moving and starting school so it wasn't entirely my fault? Also, you can probably expect more frequent (and also maybe semi regular???) updates from now on because I will likely write this piece of trash to distract myself from my real life homework. Enjoy.

“Dude, what the hell?!?” Beca is pacing back and forth, waving her hands about her head. She and Jesse have returned to their lair (really just a repurposed warehouse), and Beca is currently in the midst of her usual post-date overanalysis-slash-panic-attack.

“Beca, calm down,” Jesse says in his most reasonable voice. He props his crossed legs on the coffee table between them, reclining back against the couch with his hands behind his head.

The pitch of Beca’s voice climbs steadily. “Calm down? _That’s_ your advice? Dude, she was totally about to kiss me and then you let her incompetent tall friend ruin our moment! What were you thinking?”

“Well,” Jesse says, trying and failing to hide his amusement at Beca’s agitated state, “you see, we had a bet regarding whether or not Chloe was into you, and we were resolving it. If you want, you can have half my winnings, since it was your charming self that tipped the scales in my favor.”

Beca groans, running a hand through her already-messy hair. “You couldn’t have waited, like, five seconds?” Jesse offers her an apologetic smile.

“Sorry?” His grin grows wider, turning diabolical. Beca narrows her eyes.

“Dude, what?”

“Technically it wasn’t Kommissar, but _you_ did meet someone on your date, so movie marathons are a go! Have we seen _Love Actually_ yet?”

The front door slams, and Beca’s retort is lost in the echo. Benji dashes into the room, slightly out of breath.

“So sorry I’m late, I was, um, definitely not texting Emily! Did I miss anything important?”

He’s looking at Jesse, but Beca answers, still glaring daggers at the boy on the couch, voice positively dripping with sarcasm. “No, nothing important at all, Benji. Just us pals, having a nice conversation about _why the fuck you two would let that head case of a DEB interrupt us._ ”

Benji gulps. “I assume Jesse already apologized for us? And Emily’s not so bad, really, if you would just take a minute to have a conversation with-- But also, yes, I am so sorry,” he hastens to add when Beca stops trying to kill Jesse with her eyes in favor of turning her scowl towards him.

“At least we know Chloe likes you,” Jesse offers weakly. He’s still trying not to laugh.

“Yes,” Beca says icily. “And that’s so nice to know, particularly when she works for an organization that’s been trying to arrest me for years, making it super duper extra easy for me to talk to her.”

“On the bright side, since she’s had contact with you, they’ll probably make her head of the task force trying to apprehend you,” Benji says.

“ _How_ is that the bright side, exactly?”

“Sorry.” Benji winces, looking desperately at Jesse.

“No, don’t be,” Jesse says (his tone is even, reasonable as ever. Beca kind of wants to strangle him). “Benji’s right. If we do something public, like rob a bank, maybe take a few hostages for good measure, she’ll be first on the scene.”

Beca opens her mouth to reject the idea out of hand, then closes it, tilting her head to the side thoughtfully. “That… might actually work.”

* * *

Immediately upon entering Barden’s main building the following day, Chloe is informed that Ms. Petri is waiting for her in the main office, so off she goes, Aubrey, Emily, and Stacie trailing along curiously behind her. She has a sinking feeling she knows what this is about - a feeling that’s confirmed, when, immediately after forgetting her name, Ms. Petri pulls her in for a picture, talking nonstop about “how thrilled she was to hear that one of her own had engaged with Beca Mitchell and lived to tell the tale” and how “this stunt is really going to put Barden on the map” and how “Fred from the CIA and Lisa from INTERPOL have both called to extend their congratulations, Katie” (“Chloe,” her assistant helpfully supplies) and “Such fun!”

“Now, Cathy,” Ms. Petri says. “We are going to need a full description of the encounter.”

“The encounter?” Chloe asks nervously.

“At the restaurant, after you were separated from your squad. Everything that happened, no matter how small or irrelevant. No detail can go undocumented!”

Chloe thinks back to last night - to the _second_ encounter - Beca’s piercing blue eyes, the way her face softened as she listened to Chloe talk, the pitch of her laugh. How she had leaned in to kiss Chloe. How Chloe had let her. “Why?”

“To develop a profile, of course!” Ms. Petri exclaims, as though it should be obvious. “No one has ever been this close to Beca Mitchell before!” Beca’s nose brushing against her own. “You, for all intents and purposes, are our leading expert!”

Chloe opens her mouth to protest, but is quickly silenced, as Ms. Petri has somehow accessed her personal files and is now ostensibly giving evidence of Chloe’s supposed expertise, reading her thesis aloud to the gathered room. Chloe’s face burns. After actually meeting Beca Mitchell, all her wild theories seem laughable. She wonders if Beca would laugh, or if she would find it incredibly insulting and never want to see Chloe again. Probably the former, though she spends several moments worrying about the dismal possibility of the latter. By the time she returns to the conversation currently taking place, it’s to find that Ms. Petri has moved on to comparing her situation to _Silence of the Lambs_ \- “you’re the lamb, Carol.” (Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Stacie struggling not to tell Ms. Petri that _Silence of the Lambs_ does not, in fact, actually feature any real lambs.)

But then Ms. Petri rises to her feet, looking importantly around the room before turning her attention back to Chloe. “I’m putting you in charge of this investigation. You are hereby promoted to squad captain.”

Chloe is stunned into silence. “Um, excuse me, ma’am,” Aubrey pipes up (never has Chloe been more thankful for her best friend’s concern about rank). “But I am the captain of this squad.”

Ms. Petri turns, fixing Aubrey with a stare that reminds Chloe why this eccentric old lady is in charge of a large intelligence organization. “There is a killer on the loose! There is no time for egos. This isn’t acapella, this is espionage!” She claps her hands, calling her underlings to her before addressing Chloe. “You have the chance to do something groundbreaking. Don’t let us down. Ready your troops, we head out at four pm sharp!” She disappears, teleported to wherever her office is in a beam that Chloe is pretty sure the engineers in charge designed with heavy influences from _Star Trek: The Next Generation._

Chloe turns to Aubrey, heartfelt apology on the tip of her tongue, because Aubrey’s been working towards top squad captaincy for the past four years and Chloe doesn’t even _want_ it - always content to take background vocals to Aubrey’s lead - but Aubrey cuts her off with a tight smile. “It’s okay. It’s like my dad always says: when your enemy is a step ahead, you’d better have a really long pole. Just promise me one thing. We catch the bitch.” Chloe nods, ignoring both Aubrey’s father’s newest illogical, vaguely threatening saying and the sinking feeling in her stomach at the prospect of arresting Beca Mitchell.

An alarm sounds, and a girl Chloe vaguely recognizes as being on their squad for a day before Aubrey kicked her off for “putting her boyfriend above the DEBS” runs past, shouting at the top of her lungs. “Beca Mitchell’s on the move! Spotted at a bank downtown! She’s got hostages, run for your lives!”

Chloe’s head spins, because she just had until 4 to ready herself for _maybe_ seeing Beca and now she’s _definitely_ going to see her _now_ , and so she barely notices when Aubrey grabs her arm, tugging her towards their car.

* * *

Beca runs a hand through her hair for the fifth time, using one of the polished marble columns in the bank’s interior as a mirror. “Do I look okay?”

“Beca, relax,” Jesse says (also for the fifth time). “Maybe focus on something more important, like what you’re going to say to her, or, I don’t know, the fact that we have nine hostages tied up in a closet and are currently in the middle of an armed robbery.”

Beca frowns. “So is that a yes?”

Jesse rolls his eyes. “I’m going to go check on the guys loading the money downstairs.”

“Wait, Jesse! Is that a _no?_ What needs to be fixed? Do I have something in my teeth? Quick, they’re almost here!” Genuine anxiety laces Beca’s tone as she dashes after her second-in-command, who stops just long enough to reassure her that _yes_ , she looks okay, and _no_ , there’s nothing in her teeth, and _you’re being ridiculous, Beca._

Not altogether at ease, Beca checks her teeth in the glass of a transaction window, dashing behind a large pillar that easily hides her diminutive frame when the bank’s front doors burst open.

* * *

As their car squeals to a stop in front of the bank, Aubrey turns expectantly to Chloe. “Well?”

“What?”

“The plan, Chloe! You’re in charge, remember?” Aubrey’s tone makes clear what she thinks of having to answer to the redhead. Chloe’s not entirely sure she’s wrong, but she takes a deep breath and lays out their strategy anyway, formation Alpha-Kappa-Gamma. (She’s also not sure why all their plans have to use Greek nomenclature - aren’t the plaid skirts cult-like enough? - but now is not the time to question such protocols.) Aubrey gives her a tight nod, vaulting over the car door with her gun drawn, and Chloe hastens to follow suit.

She’s the first through the doors of the bank, Aubrey, Stacie, and Emily a step behind her. The four of them automatically cluster back-to-back in the middle of the empty foyer, guns drawn and eyes scanning their surroundings for movement.

“Clear,” Chloe declares after a moment. “Spread out, let’s make sure the area’s clear before we move to the vaults. Stay alert.” Her squad nods in unison, and the four of them begin a careful circuit of the vast room, starting at the slightest noise.

_“Psst!”_ a voice hisses from behind a column to Chloe’s left, and she jerks around at the sound.

_What the fuck are you doing here?_ she mouths at Beca Mitchell (who was, of course, the source of the noise). Beca responds with wild beckoning gestures, eyes wide.

_I can’t!_ Chloe mouths, jerking her head towards her teammates in an attempt to communicate exactly how ridiculous Beca is being. She’s pretty sure Beca didn’t get the message as her gestures get, if anything, even more frantic.

“Chloe?” Aubrey calls from across the room, “Is someone over there?”

“Nope!” Chloe yelps back, “All clear!” She turns to Beca. _See what I mean?_ Beca rolls her eyes, moving her mouth to form what Chloe is reasonably certain is _I’ll be back_ before disappearing silently down the hall.

“Chloe,” Stacie says from behind her, and Chloe starts, realizing she’s been staring at the place Beca used to be for the past thirty seconds. “The room’s clear.”

“Right,” Chloe says, doing her best to sound authoritative. “Let’s keep moving.” She briskly crosses the room, finding a different route to the vaults than the one Beca took, and leads her team through an ornate archway and into the depths of the building.

They creep along the empty hallway in a pack, encountering no one sinister (they do find the hostages, all nine of them, locked in an empty office. Oddly enough, there’s no guard posted, and Chloe doesn’t want to draw attention to them by shooting the lock off the door, so after determining they’re in no immediate danger they leave them where they are and continue toward the vault below).

The vault is empty by the time they arrive, door hanging open and no one in sight. “Okay,” Chloe says. “Secure the vault.”

Aubrey looks at her incredulously. “Are you seeing this? Dark, shadowy corners? _No_ bad guys? It’s clearly a trap.”

“Aubrey,” Chloe says. Pleads. “Can we _please_ just do this so we can get out of here?” Under no circumstances does she want to see Beca Mitchell again. (Well. At least under _these_ circumstances. She can think about any potential others later.)

Aubrey sighs. “Fine.”

Chloe offers her a nervous smile in thanks, following her into the small, empty space. The minute they’re all inside, the (four foot thick, six thousand pound, reinforced steel) door swings shut, impervious to the shots Stacie fires at it. Emily groans.

“See?” Aubrey says. “It’s a--”

Before she can finish her sentence, the ground under Chloe’s feet disappears, and she falls, screaming, through the floor. She can hear the echoing “trap” follow her through the chute, toppling behind her onto a pile of money. She looks up.

“Hey,” Beca says, grinning down at her. At the sight of her, Chloe’s sneaking suspicion that this entire heist is taking place just so the two of them can have a conversation is confirmed, and she finds herself suddenly furious.

Chloe springs to her feet. _“Beca!_ What the _fuck?”_

“What?” Beca asks. When they’re both standing, Beca has to tilt her head up slightly to meet Chloe’s eyes.

“You have to release them!”

“Sorry, who?” Now Beca looks genuinely confused.

“The hostages!” (Beca’s expression, though now free of bewilderment, remains unrepentant.) “And put back the money! This whole thing has gotten way out of hand!”

Beca grimaces, raising her eyebrows in a poorly-executed attempt to look apologetic. “Sorry?”

Her words do nothing to dampen the rage now boiling up inside Chloe, and she all but explodes at the other woman. “Look, I’m sorry I freaked out last night, but don’t you understand? I _can’t_ be here!”

 “Dude, sorry!” Beca takes a step back, raising her hands defensively. “I didn’t mean to stress you out--”

“I’m not stressed out!” Chloe lies (given the pitch of her voice, she’s pretty sure it’s one of the least convincing lies she’s ever told).

“I’m not-- I don’t--” Beca struggles furiously for a moment to form a coherent sentence, but Chloe cuts her off before she can.

“My friends will be wondering where I am.”

“No, they won’t,” Beca says quickly.

Chloe narrows her eyes at the other woman, who lowers her own, muttering something about booby traps and spikes descending from the ceiling.

“Oh my god, Beca!” Chloe shrieks.

“Come on, it’s not like they’re going to _die_ or anything.”

_“Turn it off!”_

“Okay, fine!” Beca says, pulling her phone out of her back pocket and tapping emphatically. “Booby trap deactivated, happy?”

Chloe closes her eyes, taking a deep breath and trying to get a handle on the rage still coursing through her. “I should go,” she says, starting to shoulder her way past Beca.

“No-- wait--” Beca says, panicked, still struggling to vocalize her thoughts before finally blurting out, “I just wanted to see you, okay?”

Chloe freezes, all the anger draining from her body. “Beca,” she says, slowly.

“No,” Beca says, “just - let me finish.” Now that the damage is done - now that Chloe definitely knows that she _cares_ \- she doesn’t seem to be able to stop the words spilling from her mouth. “I had a really good time last night, and I _really_ like you, and Jesse said that you’d be in charge of trying to capture me, since you’d met me and weren’t dead, so robbing a bank to get your attention seemed like a good idea at the time, and you probably think I’m really stupid, because this whole thing is poorly-planned and crazy and ridiculous, but it’s just that lastnightwasthemostaliveI’vefeltinawhile.” She lets out the last thought in one long breath, words sliding over each other and together like sand through an hourglass, all trying to get through at once and becoming nearly indistinguishable. “So.” Beca’s cheeks are pink, and she’s chewing her lip nervously, avoiding Chloe’s eyes.

_“Beca,”_ Chloe says again, voice cracking. She’s written more than twenty pages about the girl in front of her, but when they’re face to face she doesn’t seem to be able to say anything.

“It’s okay,” Beca says, cutting her off. “I’ll go.” She makes an attempt at her usual self-deprecating smile, but it’s weak, the fourth carbon copy down in a stack of documents. “I guess I’ll see you around. Same bad timing, or whatever.” She turns to leave.

And it’s like Chloe’s brain short-circuits, just for a split second. Though it’s back up and running in no time at all, the section that’s in charge of making Good Decisions is a step behind, restoring from a previous backup after the force quit, and in the interim Chloe’s operating without it, acting on pure instinct. She takes a step forward, reaching out for Beca’s wrist and tugging her to a stop. The shorter girl turns towards Chloe, eyes wide, and before she can say anything Chloe is stepping fully into her personal space, leaning down and slanting her mouth against Beca’s.

It’s over almost before it begins, just a quick press of lips before Chloe pulls away, but neither of them makes an attempt to move further, foreheads pressed gently together. Beca’s free hand has found its way to Chloe’s waist, and Chloe’s has slid around to the back of Beca’s neck, keeping them close.

Beca is smiling, for once without an ounce of sarcasm. “Come with me,” she breathes softly against Chloe’s mouth, pulling back just slightly to meet her eyes.

“I can’t,” Chloe whispers, trying not to think about how soft Beca’s hair is. How soft her lips are.

“Come on,” Beca says. Her fingertips are tapping out light rhythms against Chloe’s hip. “What do you have to lose?”

Chloe lets out a shaky laugh. She thinks about Aubrey, and her fierce ambition, and how she’s been there for the past four years of boy drama and the pressure that comes with being the Perfect Score. About Stacie, who’s always good for a witty one-liner (usually about her latest piece of arm candy) and is one of the smartest people Chloe’s ever met. Emily, who under Aubrey’s watchful eye has turned from a clumsy, fresh-faced kid into a halfway decent agent. How she’s graduating soon, just a month shy of being a Real Spy.  “Everything.”

Beca closes her eyes, letting her forehead fall back against Chloe’s. Except Chloe has several inches on her, so she has to actually lean _up_ to accomplish this. Chloe bites back a giggle, and Beca opens one eye. “What?”

“Nothing.” Then, when Beca raises an eyebrow at her, “It’s just, you’re this badass criminal but you’re so _short_.”

“Excuse me,” Beca says, pulling back to glare at her and letting her hand drop away from Chloe’s waist (Chloe instantly mourns the loss of contact). “I’ll have you know that I’m taller than the original Glinda from _Wicked_ and at least twelve middle schoolers.”

At this, Chloe does let out a giggle, which turns into a full-blown laugh when Beca’s glare deepens and she tugs her other hand out of Chloe’s grasp to cross her arms. This, combined with the fact that she’s wearing all black, makes her look like a pixie that’s left the woods to join a motorcycle gang. And, in a moment of temporary insanity (because Beca is beautiful and way more than she’d imagined and makes Chloe feel alive in a way she’s only ever felt when she’s singing), Chloe makes up her mind.

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I’ll come with you.”

“Wait, really?” Beca’s arms unknot, and she takes on an expression of incredulous delight before attempting (albeit unsuccessfully) to force her face back into a scowl. “Actually, you know what, you’re not welcome anymore. Not after you insulted my honor like that.”

Chloe smirks, stepping close to the brunette and slipping both hands around to the small of her back. She leans in until their lips are almost touching, and Beca visibly swallows. “Are you sure?”

Beca’s tone is hushed, voice cracking around her words. “Not really.” And then her long fingers are tangling in ginger hair, and she’s tugging Chloe’s mouth down that last bit of distance to meet her own. This time, the kiss is deeper, more sure; Beca nips gently at Chloe’s bottom lip, swallowing Chloe’s answering gasp before licking her way into her mouth. Chloe’s arms tighten around the shorter girl until their bodies are pressed flush together. Her skin burns everywhere Beca is touching her.

A loud clattering comes from the floor above them, and they break apart, both flushed and breathing heavily.

“We should go,” Chloe says, and Beca nods, looking just as dazed as Chloe feels.

“Wait, hang on.” Beca leans down to reach into a bag on the floor beside them Chloe hadn’t noticed, presumably filled with illicit bank-robbing materials. She rummages through it and pulls out a switchblade.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

“Dude, relax. We have to make your disappearance look convincing.” Beca moves toward Chloe, and then her breath is on Chloe’s neck (Chloe struggles to stay focused) as she carefully cuts through the loop of her tie.

“Beca! That was twenty dollars!”

Beca makes a face. “They actually made you _pay_ for these ridiculous things?” She returns the knife to the bag, swapping it for a can of spray paint and roll of tape. Chloe watches, torn between impatient and impressed as Beca paints _i HAVE THE GIRL!_ on the wall and tapes the ruined tie carefully below the message. She reaches into her pocket and scatters a handful of diamonds on the surrounding floor for good measure. “Also, give me your phone. GPS, you know.”

“Do you just, like, carry diamonds around at all times in case you need to mark your presence?” Chloe asks, grinning as she unlocks the device and hands it over.

“Being a supervillain is hard work, you know,” Beca retorts, tapping away. “Done.” She returns Chloe’s phone, then leans down to pick up the bag and sling it over her shoulder. She reaches out, lacing her fingers with Chloe’s.

Chloe marvels at how well their hands fit together, and doesn’t look back as she follows Beca out of the bank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come yell at me over at queerpeggycarters dot tumblr (and maybe follow me, i make trash edits sometimes)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beca and Chloe arrive at the lair and do a bunch of things that didn't happen in the movie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow it has been a long time since I've posted anything (or written anything tbh). I've had school and also been an utter trash pile sobbing over Root and Shaw, oops. So without further ado, here's the next installment in this train wreck. Enjoy.

Thankfully, Jesse has finished coordinating the robbery by the time Beca leaves the bank with Chloe, and is waiting for them on the curb, engine idling.

“What, am I your chauffeur now?” he asks when Beca opens the rear door for Chloe and follows her into the backseat. Despite his accusatory words his tone is light, teasing. He twists around to wink at her.

“Dude. Just drive. Police on the way and all.” Beca kicks the back of his seat for good measure.

He salutes. “Your wish is my command, ma’am.” The car screeches as he accelerates, but now that they’re away and clear Beca forgets to reprimand him for the corresponding wear to the tires (it’s a _mint condition ‘59 Coupe DeVille, Jesse_ ), attention directed fully at the redhead nervously perched on the seat beside her.

Chloe’s looking directly at her, eyes wide, biting at her lip. “What happens now?”

“I don’t know, Chloe,” Beca says honestly. Their hands are still intertwined, and she squeezes Chloe’s fingers gently. She offers her a soft smile. “I’m really happy you’re here, though.” Even after their confrontation and her subsequent word-vomit, blood rushes to her face at the veracity of her statement.

Some of the anxiety drops away from Chloe’s expression, and she scoots sideways on the seat until they’re pressed together from hip to knee, resting their joined hands on Beca’s lap. Her head falls against Beca’s shoulder and she drops a soft kiss against her collarbone, closing her eyes. Beca extricates her hand from Chloe’s to wrap her arm around the other girl; Jesse smirks at her in the rearview mirror, and Beca automatically raises her middle finger in his direction before letting her own eyes flutter shut.

\--

Beca wakes with a start when the car stops moving. She’d dozed off before they’d even left the city, Chloe’s breath on her neck and fingers tracing mindless shapes on Beca’s knee. She raises her head from where it's been pressed against the window, looking over at the girl next to her to ensure that the past several hours have not, in fact, been a dream and that Chloe Beale, Perfect Score and DEBS poster child, has actually agreed to essentially run away with her. She's met with clear blue eyes, and for a moment she stays motionless, holding Chloe's gaze.

Jesse clears his throat loudly. "Okay! I'll be inside if you need me."

"We should probably go, too," Chloe murmurs as the door slams behind him.

Beca nods slowly, not breaking eye contact as Chloe leans in until their lips are almost touching. So quietly she barely catches it, Chloe breathes, “You drool in your sleep.”

Before she can do anything other than blink stupidly, the redhead is twisting away, climbing remarkably gracefully over Beca and out the door, which she’s somehow managed to get open without Beca noticing. Her clear laugh echoes around the garage.

Beca swears, surreptitiously wiping her mouth on her sleeve as she clambers out after her. Chloe has stopped just short of the door to the main building, looking at it as apprehensively as if it read BECA MITCHELL’S EVIL LAIR (it doesn’t - it’s plain and grey and entirely unexciting). Beca stops next to her, stomach suddenly twisting - because this is _it_ , and she may have just triggered a nationwide manhunt but what if Chloe decides that the life of a supervillain is boring and horrible and wants to be taken home immediately? - and Chloe reaches out automatically to wrap her hand around Beca’s. Beca feels the warmth travel up her arm and throughout her body, coming to rest somewhere at the base of her chest. It gives her the courage to squeeze Chloe’s fingers reassuringly, shooting her a cocky grin as she pushes open the door.

\--

Beca soon realizes that Chloe Beale may be a top government agent, but she is most decidedly not your typical taciturn spy. Jesse and Benji are slouched on a couch playing _Portal 2_ in the second room they pass, and Chloe immediately stops to say hello. And then spends five minutes arguing with Benji over the relative merits of _Portal_ vs. _Portal 2_. They stop again thirty seconds later when the guy rewiring the security feed is playing _1989_ and Chloe all but shrieks. (This time, though, Beca can agree that the album is a lyrical work of genius.) She finds that she doesn’t mind the constant chatter, even likes it - something she could certainly never say about anyone else, and also would _never_ admit. Excited Chloe is even more adorable than regular Chloe, voice increasing in both pitch and tempo as she enthusiastically discusses the impact the _Bad Blood_ music video had on popular culture. By the time they reach their destination, almost an hour later, Beca’s pretty sure at least half her team is enamoured with the ginger.

(She can relate.)

She’s taken Chloe to her favorite reasonably-communal area, the one where she’s set up some of her mixing equipment (she figures her bedroom might seem a bit forward at this juncture). There’s an overstuffed couch in one corner and a makeshift recording studio in another, the rest of the empty space taken up by a large, ugly coffee table Jesse found at a yard sale two years ago and purchased without her knowledge - she’s threatened to burn it on more than one occasion - and a few pieces of her clothing strewn across the floor.

The second they’re through the door, Chloe’s attention is immediately drawn to the mixing equipment, and she drops Beca’s hand in her hurry to examine it. Beca uses the distraction to hastily arrange the discarded clothing into a slightly neater pile before making her way across the room.

“Wow, Beca,” Chloe says, voice hushed. The setup, at least for Beca, isn’t much - just a keyboard, a microphone, and a few mixing boards; she’s got far more impressive equipment and a soundproofed recording space at her house in Montenegro - but Chloe’s looking at it like it’s freaking Abbey Road. Her hands glide across the surface of the keyboard, fingers hovering an inch above the keys.

“Do you play?” Beca comes to stand beside Chloe, resting her hands on the familiar notes.

“Just a little. Emily writes music all the time, so sometimes she asks me for input. I love to sing, though.”

“Sing something for me,” Beca says. When Chloe hesitates, she nudges her with her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll even accompany you.”

“Fine.” Chloe rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning as she moves around to the side of the keyboard, looking expectantly at Beca. Beca flicks the power switches on the keyboard and amp, running through a scale to warm up her fingers as the instrument comes to life. She hasn’t played in ages, so she picks the song she’s most familiar with (assuming Chloe hasn’t been living under a rock, she knows it too), looking down at her hands as she plays through the intro. When she starts singing, though, she looks at Chloe.

_You shout it out, but I can’t hear a word you say…_

Chloe joins in on the chorus, harmonizing effortlessly, keeping her eyes locked with Beca’s as they sing. They sound good together. Really good. The kind of good where Beca’s fingers trip over a key before finding her place again, because for a second she forgets everything but Chloe. Chloe, and her voice, and her incredible blue eyes, and the way she smiles at Beca with her whole face while somehow keeping perfect pitch, and Beca’s known this girl for, like, forty hours, but she’s already in deep.

She lets Chloe take the second verse before they finish out the song together, maintaining eye contact, voices weaving in and out through the bridge and final chorus, fading out over the last few notes. When it’s finally quiet, Beca lets her hands drop to her sides, looking up at Chloe.

“Wow.”

Chloe nods slowly, eyes fixed on Beca. Her smile spreads until it seems to light up the entire room, and she moves around the keyboard in a few short strides until she’s directly in front of Beca. Beca swallows hard, transfixed by brilliant blue eyes that haven’t left hers. She only manages to break her gaze away when they slip shut, but by then Chloe’s already leaning in. Hands coming up to tangle in Beca’s hair, she presses their mouths together hungrily. Her tongue flicks across Beca’s teeth, and Beca whimpers, wrapping her arms around Chloe’s neck. One of Chloe’s hands slides across Beca’s shoulders and down her back, fingertips leaving goosebumps in their wake, and she presses closer, tilting her head to deepen their kiss, which Beca returns eagerly.

Beca only notices they’re moving when the backs of her knees hit the couch, and Chloe pulls away long enough to push Beca back into the cushions and climb on top of her, effectively straddling her before reattaching their mouths. Her hands slip back into Beca’s hair and Beca’s fall instinctively to Chloe’s hips, tugging her closer. She catches Chloe’s bottom lip between her teeth and Chloe moans, hands fisting in tangled locks.

Beca feels Chloe pull her mouth away and she opens her eyes to protest the loss of contact, but then Chloe’s lips are falling to her neck and Beca’s eyes are slipping involuntarily shut again as Chloe presses wet, open mouthed kisses down the column of her throat. She bites at the juncture between Beca’s neck and shoulder and Beca hisses, blunt fingernails digging in where they’ve slipped just under Chloe’s shirt. Before she can even open her mouth to apologize for the half-moons left on Chloe’s sides - assuming, of course, she can form a coherent sentence, which is iffy under the current circumstances - Chloe is soothing the bite with her tongue, then running her lips back up Beca’s neck to suck at her pulse point, and Beca loses her train of thought completely.

Beca’s head falls back against the couch cushions, barely feeling the scratchy, dubiously-clean material as all her nerves seem to have turned into tiny electric shocks and  migrated to the stretch of her neck currently under assault, sending jolts out through the rest of her body with every press of Chloe’s lips and scrape of her teeth. The electricity follows Chloe’s mouth up to spark against where she’s trailing kisses along Beca’s jaw, and short-circuits into a flickering mess when she nips gently at the sensitive skin behind Beca’s ear.

Chloe finally returns to Beca’s lips and Beca hums her approval, mouth opening easily under Chloe’s. For a long time they just kiss, a gentle press of lips and tongues that get increasingly confident the longer they’re touching. Beca’s hands skim over Chloe’s hips, fingers flexing lightly. She’s still wearing her DEBS uniform - minus the tie - and the tips of Beca’s fingers dip under the waistband of that stupid plaid skirt, running along the faint indentations it’s left in Chloe’s skin before gliding up and tracing patterns along the soft expanse of her back. Chloe arches her back in response, breasts and stomach pressing lightly against Beca’s own, and Beca trails her lips across Chloe’s cheek to the curve of her jaw, eliciting a soft moan when her tongue flicks against Chloe’s pulse.

She’s just fumbled open the top button of Chloe’s shirt, pressing a kiss against the newly exposed hollow of her throat, when the door crashes open.

“Beca? Are you in… Oh.”

Jesse’s interrupted her at inopportune moments in the past, but Beca’s pretty sure this one takes the cake. With a sigh she lets her head fall back against the couch dramatically, flushing, and Chloe slips off her lap with a soft giggle to sit pressed against her side. If it were possible for rushing blood to cause literal combustion, Beca’s certain her ears would be on fire.

“What do you _want_ , Jesse?”

“Sorry,” he says quickly, managing to look appropriately chastised at her tone. “It’s just, Benji and I were going to order pizza, and we thought we should ask if you two wanted any.”

“Actually, yes,” Beca says, suddenly starving. “You know my order. And since you interrupted us, you’re buying.”

“Fair enough,” Jesse says. “Chloe? Pizza?”

“Green peppers, olives, and pineapple with extra cheese. Thanks Jesse!”

“You got it.” Jesse backs out of the room, giving Beca an entirely-unsubtle thumbs-up and accompanying shit-eating grin before shutting the door firmly behind him.

The moment he’s gone, Beca turns to Chloe (who’s been rubbing circles into her knee for the past several minutes), incredulous. “Pineapple and olives? Really?”

“It’s good!” Chloe retorts. Her thumb does another circuit of Beca’s knee. Then, when Beca’s disbelieving expression doesn’t weaken, “What’s your order, then?”

"Um. Pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, olives, meatball, salami, bacon, ham?”

“You think mine is disgusting? Have you _heard_ of nutrition?” Chloe pauses. “Wait, how does delivery work? Since I’m assuming you don’t reveal the location of your secret lair to the pizza guy.”

“We usually make Jesse go and pick it up. Except that one time after he and Benji marathoned _Breaking Bad_ and they thought it would be a good idea to ask for delivery and then meet the guy in the parking lot of a laundromat. I swear to god, they’re technologically brilliant but they’re also the biggest nerds I’ve ever met.”

Chloe giggles, and Beca leans into her side, tucking her head under Chloe’s chin. And Chloe Beale may be a government superspy out to catch her, but for the first time in a long time, Beca feels safe.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am aware literally nothing in this chapter happened in the actual movie. BUT, it was 1) an opportunity to keep things interesting so you could feel like you weren't just reading DEBS in fanfic form, 2) an excuse to make a Titanium reference, and 3) a good reason to write these two nerds making out for probably too long (the rating has been accordingly upped to the highly scandalous T).
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are highly appreciated, and you should come yell at me over on tumblr at queerpeggycarters.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe is petulant and Beca is a whipped asshole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I'm actual garbage, this chapter is rather short, is literally just fluffy snapshots, and has even less purpose than the previous one in terms of actually advancing the plot. I can only say that I offer my sincerest halfhearted apologies and also promise the next chapter will be getting back on track. Anyways, here you go.

The first thing Beca does the next day is take Chloe shopping because, “Even though you look really cute in my clothes, they’re just a _tad_ small and there’s no way you can wear that ridiculous skirt again.” And Chloe would usually protest the slight to Barden’s uniform, but in her current situation she has to agree. She’d spent the night in a slightly-too-short pair of Beca’s sweatpants and a _Simple Minds_ t-shirt that was once Jesse’s, curled around Beca in her bed. (She’d laughed when she discovered the notorious Beca Mitchell was a little spoon. Beca had just grumbled incoherently and pulled Chloe’s arm more snugly against her waist.) And since she’d arrived at the bank expecting to arrest Beca, she’d brought absolutely nothing that could be considered suitable attire for fraternizing with a wanted criminal, so shopping it is.

Beca, it turns out, is _terrible_ at shopping. Although she’s actually halfway decent at identifying what Chloe would like, she seems to have no grasp of either the type or quantity of clothes required. She tries to buy Chloe four different sweaters and a pair of boots that cost nearly as much as Barden’s tuition (“I'm an international criminal, Chlo. Money isn't a problem”), but forgets entirely about staples like socks. She does, however, turn adorably beet-red when Chloe drops a ludicrously lacy turquoise bra into their basket with a wink and a brush of fingertips against her side.

\--

Once Chloe is suitably attired, they end up back at the seedy club. It's been magically transformed into a coffee shop-diner during daylight hours and they sit pressed together in the same booth where they first almost-kissed. Chloe insists they split a milkshake because “it’s cuter” and, when Beca pouts, promises to buy her another one if by some miracle she finishes the thirty ounces of extra-creamy ice cream still hungry.

At one point, Kommissar passes by their booth. Her heavily-lined eyes dart across Chloe before she gives Beca an approving nod, smirking at the two of them. Chloe’s fingers tighten imperceptibly around Beca’s waist at the German’s appearance.

When they leave the establishment a few minutes later and Chloe pushes Beca against the brick wall of the building, her mouth tastes like strawberries.

\--

One night, Jesse declares the need for a Group Outing and drags them all to a karaoke bar. Beca rolls her eyes at Chloe’s clear excitement over their destination, sinking down in their booth and making a sweeping statement about the utter lameness of the whole thing - granted, it loses much of its potency when Chloe beams at her. Because of _course_ she has to grin back. (Next to them, Jesse murmurs something to Benji, and Beca catches the word _whipped_. She gives him her best death glare.)

Jesse and Benji are up first, and their cover of Bruno Mars’s _Magic_ goes surprisingly well, given the multiple empty glasses left behind at their table, forgotten layers of foam still lining the bottoms. Jesse might stumble over a few words during the rap, but they hit all the notes and get the loudest applause of the night, and Chloe’s breath tickles Beca’s ear as she relates her newest theory regarding Beca’s whole operation being a front for the next big music studio.

When they return to the booth, Jesse directs a truly astounding shit-eating grin at Beca. “I figured you might not otherwise, so I signed the two of us up for a song later.”

“Jesse, _no_.”

“Jesse, yes!” he crows. “And you can’t back out now. Don’t want to look like a wimp in front of your girl.” He attempts to wink at Chloe, but given his state of intoxication both his eyes close.

Beca groans.

Forty minutes later, the host calls for “J-Dog and B Mitch,” and Beca reluctantly allows Chloe to push her out of the booth with a sloppy good-luck kiss to the forehead.

“Also,” Jesse mutters as he pulls her onto the stage, “I’m only doing the rap. And back-up vocals, of course.” He pats her cheek. Beca does her best not to punch him, trying desperately to figure out what horrible song he could possibly have chosen. But it’s not until she’s staring out at the half-full bar, microphone in hand, the first few notes leaking tinnily out of the speakers, that Beca realizes how well and truly screwed she is.

 _Fuck you_ , she mouths at Jesse. He’s standing across from her, grinning triumphantly as he bobs his head in time with the opening chords of the 2008 Jonas Brothers’ hit classic _Burnin’ Up_.

The thing is, Beca knows _all_ the words to this song. More times than she’d like to admit, several tequila shots past her limit, she and Jesse have sung this together. _("Hey Beca, remember when we were thirteen and you were convinced you were going to marry Joe Jonas?" "Shut up nerd, we all know you were just jealous because you wanted him for yourself.")_  Once, they even got Benji to do the rap. Except this has all been in the privacy of one of their hideouts. And never before has there been a beautiful girl Beca wants desperately to impress sitting across the room.

Chloe’s eyes are shining at Beca, and she feels a sudden surge of courage that only slightly has to do with the three beers she’s had tonight. She takes a deep breath.

_I’m hot_

_You’re cold…_

Beca makes her way through the song with - thankfully - only minimal embarrassment, actually starting to enjoy herself as she starts the second verse. She barely minds when Jesse echoes all her lyrics in classic Jo’ Bro’s style, and even manages to awkwardly back him up during his solo; by the time the ordeal is finally she thinks she’ll hold off on killing him - maybe just sneak into his room in the middle of the night and shave off his eyebrows.

Chloe’s smile grows throughout the song, and by the time Beca collapses back next to her amidst thunderous applause, it’s practically splitting her face in two.

“You know,” she breathes in Beca’s ear, fingers skating across her kneecap, “I used to think Nick was the best Jonas Brother. But I think I just found my new favorite.”

“You’re horrible,” Beca tries to say, but finds her mouth otherwise occupied as Chloe slides a hand around the back of her neck to bring their lips together.

She might let Jesse keep his eyebrows after all.

\--

Chloe is outraged when she discovers Beca takes her coffee black.

“Black coffee tastes like _actual_ mud, Becs.”

“Wow, I’m sorry I don’t want to contaminate my body with that ridiculous syrupy shit you drink.”

“Says the girl who puts every type of meat known to humankind on her pizza. This is a travesty,” Chloe declares. “We’re getting coffee today and I’m going to order for you.”

Beca grumbles, but inevitably acquiesces (because what else can she possibly do when Chloe is looking at her like that, blue eyes wide and lower lip jutting out just the slightest bit). When they arrive at the nearest coffee establishment, Beca settles into a squashy armchair in the corner and glares at Chloe. Chloe grins happily in return, smacking a kiss to Beca’s cheek before heading to the drink line.

“One large mocha with extra chocolate and two pumps of caramel” sounds at her ear, and Beca turns to find said drink thrust into her face as Chloe slides into her lap.

“This is gross, Chlo.”

“You haven’t even tried it yet!”

Beca peers skeptically at Chloe over the rim of her cup as she takes a sip.

“....Fine. This is actually pretty good. Don’t tell Jesse.”

\--

When Chloe mentions that she doesn’t know how to drive a car with manual transmission, Beca takes it upon herself - despite her utter lack of instructional skills - to teach her. An hour and a half later, sitting in the passenger seat of her beloved Cadillac, nails digging into the leather as Chloe kills the engine for the twelfth time, she finally considers the notion that she might have overestimated both their abilities. Externally, however, she smooths her thumb over Chloe’s hand where it’s resting on the gearshift and smiles encouragingly.

“What does this do?” Chloe asks distractedly, reaching for a button on the dashboard.

“Wait - Chloe - don’t -”

There’s a hissing sound, and a miniature rocket shoots out from its position under the car, leaving a looped trail of smoke in its wake before it crashes into the only other car - thankfully, an empty one - in the parking lot. Car and rocket explode on impact, and shards of flaming metal crash down where it used to be.

Chloe looks so panicked at this sudden turn of events that Beca has to laugh, an action that earns her a glare to rival one of Beca’s own. She ends up - at Chloe’s insistence - leaving a wad of cash on the blackened pavement in apology.

\--

The fifth evening of Chloe’s stay, Beca takes her to watch the sunset. The bluffs overlooking the water are one of her favorite places - one of the reasons she keeps coming back to this godforsaken, crawling-with-plaid-skirted-superspies city. She brings a fuzzy blanket and a thermos full of hot chocolate - _God_ , Chloe is turning her into a sap - and parks on the edge of the cliff while the sun is still hanging low in the sky.

They settle atop a nearby picnic table, leaning comfortably against each other. Beca wraps the blanket around them, using the motion as an excuse to drape her arm across Chloe’s shoulders, and Chloe nuzzles the top of her head into Beca’s neck.

Pinks and oranges steal across the horizon, painting tapestries across the sky, but Beca’s watching Chloe. The glow of the sunset lights up her face and sets her already-bright hair aflame, and Beca suddenly finds it difficult to breathe.

“You’re beautiful,” she murmurs into Chloe’s hair. Chloe’s hand tightens around Beca’s waist in response, and she leans up to press a soft kiss to the corner of Beca’s jaw.

Logically, Beca knows that she’s known Chloe Beale for six days - less than a week, even. Except her level of contentment around the redhead is as though they’ve known each other for years, and now, with Chloe’s shoulders rising and falling under her arm with each breath, and Chloe’s thumb rubbing soothing lines against her hip, it feels a little - a _lot_ \- like she’s in love.

\--

Technically, they know their time together is limited - that eventually, Chloe will have to appear to have magically escaped from Beca’s dastardly clutches and return to her life. Return to being a DEB; to being the Perfect Score; to trying to capture Beca Mitchell and her associates. They don’t talk about it, but it hangs ominous and unspoken between them - when they’re cuddled on the couch watching _The X Files_ because Beca doesn’t like movies but thinks Scully’s hot; when they try to cook breakfast and end up getting eggs in each other’s hair; when Chloe’s beating Beca at _Portal 2_ for the eighth time _(it’s not even a game you can win, Chloe)_ ; when they fall asleep tangled together. Beca tries not to think about the possibility of any alternatives.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're welcome for this fluffy pile of trash. Comment, kudos, etc. and come hit me up @queerpeggycarters on tumblr.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I totally meant to post this way earlier, but then I had 631037 things to do and forgot. In this trash installment, we actually more or less follow the plot of the movie and real things happen besides just fluffy nonsense. Also, it could probably be rated like a super light M (what have I done) but I'm leaving it as T because I said so. Here we go.

The night marking a full week’s anniversary of Chloe breaking every code in the book to run away with a supervillain finds the two of them on Beca’s bed, Chloe’s head in Beca’s lap and Beca’s fingers running absently through her hair.

“...So then, this crazy Australian lady shows up at my door and starts going on and on about how I’ve been accepted to Barden University - which I didn’t even know existed, much less actually apply to, by the way - and how if I didn’t accept their offer I’d be stupider than the crocodile she wrestled last year.”

Beca laughs. “Yeah, the government’s crazeballs.”

There’s a long pause, broken only by the soft, contented noises emanating from the back of Chloe’s throat as Beca’s nails continue to comb across her scalp.

“So, what does it measure?” Beca asks finally. “The secret test in the SAT.”

“I don’t know,” Chloe says. “Spy stuff, I guess.”

“Hmm.” Beca’s fingers still in Chloe’s hair, and Chloe sits up.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just kinda weird that you let this test, like, decide your life for you and you don’t even know what it’s for.”

“It doesn’t decide my life for me,” Chloe says, feeling suddenly defensive. “It’s an aptitude test, it measures, like, proclivity towards being a spy.”

“Okay.”

Beca’s expression remains skeptical, and it spurs Chloe to continue, drawing her knees up against her chest. “You should do what you’re good at.”

“What about doing what you love?”

“I _am_ doing what I love.” Chloe’s not sure why Beca is pushing the issue. “I mean, just because I’m not some badass criminal doesn’t mean what I do isn’t important.”

“I never said that!” Now Beca is the defensive one, voice pitching up and a flush rising to her cheeks.

“I mean, do you love a life of crime?” The guards that had shot up in Chloe’s brain the minute Beca had questioned her choice of profession are now pushing back, turning resistance into aggression.

“Yeah, I do!”

“So, it’s fun for you to take money from innocent, hardworking people.”

Beca’s eyes narrow. “What is your problem?”

“Nothing! I just don’t think you should be judging me!”

“Dude, I’m not the one that got picked out of, like, every seventeen-year-old in the United States to be some badass, master-crime-fighting goody-two-shoes.” Beca doesn’t meet Chloe’s eyes, picking at a loose thread in the bedspread beneath them. “I’ve never been perfect at anything.”

Chloe doesn’t move, but her expression softens slightly.

“I didn’t even want to _be_ a criminal.” Beca lifts her eyes slowly from the duvet. “I wanted to be a music producer.” Her voice is soft, like this is the first time she’s voiced this secret, and her gaze is searching. Chloe sighs, letting her legs extend against the mattress so they’re slotted under Beca’s.

“Why didn’t you?”

“My dad got remarried after my mom died, and he wanted to retire to be with his new _wife_.” Beca says the last word as though it’s taboo. “He needed someone to take over, asked me to do it for a year while he trained someone else. Told me if I did, he’d get me an internship at this recording studio in LA and pay my way. But then that ‘someone else’ washed out, and I was really good at it, and it _really_ pissed of the stepmonster, so I just stuck with it. And now here I am.” She laughs hollowly.

Chloe reaches for Beca’s hand, all defensive indignation gone at the look on Beca’s face. Beca curls her fingers around Chloe’s, giving her a weak smile as Chloe squeezes gently.

“I wanted to study music,” Chloe says. “At NYU.”

“You should go, you should do it.”

“Maybe.” Chloe grins wryly. “After I’m finished making the world safe from people like you.”

Beca is silent, but she runs her thumb over Chloe’s knuckles and brings their joined hands to her mouth, keeping her eyes locked with Chloe’s as she drops a kiss against the back of Chloe’s hand. Chloe’s eyelids flutter at the contact, and she sighs.

“I don’t know what the test is on. Everyone thinks I’m going to make this _perfect_ spy. Except me.” Chloe raises an eyebrow, letting her gaze flick deliberately down to Beca’s mouth. “Guess I’m proving them all wrong now.”

“Is that what you’re doing with me?” Beca’s voice is steady, but there’s a hint of insecurity in the way she forms her words. “Sabotaging your spy career?”

“Of course not!” Chloe says quickly, volume louder than she’d intended in her haste to dissipate the anxiety Beca is failing to hide. She leans forward, tone softening. “I’m here because I like you. A lot.” Beca swallows hard, and Chloe watches the bobbing of her throat intently before she continues. “Beca, I feel more like myself, more _alive_ , when I’m with you than I do when I’m with me.”

For a moment Beca is stunned into silence, gaping at Chloe as though she’s never seen her before. “Look,” she says finally, shaping her mouth carefully around each word. “Let’s just… forget we’re here? And pretend we’re in New York, and sharing some tiny overpriced apartment in Manhattan with, like, exposed brick and tall windows, and you’re in grad school for music and I’m a Grammy-winning producer. And nobody’s a superhero, nobody’s a villain, we’re just us.” She bites her lip, eyeing Chloe tentatively.

Chloe can’t help herself. She giggles. “Roleplay, Mitchell? Kinky.”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Beca says, nervous tension draining from her shoulders, but Chloe is already kissing her, hands cupping Beca’s jaw as she leans forward. Beca all but melts against her, lips parting under Chloe’s and tongue slipping into Chloe’s mouth. Chloe exhales heavily, stomach twisting in the now-familiar way she is coming to recognize as the sensation she gets when she’s kissing Beca. More comfortable now, perhaps, but no less powerful than the first time.

Chloe lets her hands glide lightly down Beca’s neck to curl around her shoulders, and she surges forward, pressing until Beca’s back hits the mattress. Chloe slides down with her, body curved around Beca’s side as she leans over the smaller girl.

Beca’s fingers flex lightly at Chloe’s hips, and for a moment, Chloe _does_ let herself forget - can almost imagine, as she kisses a crooked line down Beca’s neck, that it is just the two of them. As Beca’s hands slip under the hem of Chloe’s shirt, nails dragging lightly up her back, Chloe holds Beca tighter, losing herself in the sensation.

A sharp _snap_ , accompanied by a sudden sting somewhere in the vicinity of her bra clasp, returns Chloe to reality. She tears her lips away from Beca’s collarbone to look down at the other girl, who has turned bright red.

“Did you just snap my bra?”

“I’m so sorry,” Beca says, dropping her hands to the bedspread. (Despite her still-smarting back, Chloe instantly mourns the loss of contact.) “I have no idea how that happened.”

“That hasn’t happened to me since the ninth grade!”

“What on earth were you getting up to in the ninth grade, Beale?” Beca snickers, but the smile drops from her face when Chloe leans even closer, slipping her hand down the neck of Beca’s shirt to snap her own bra strap in retaliation. “You are so dead.”

“It’s _so_ on, Mitchell.”

Beca does her best, but Chloe has four inches and twenty pounds on her and within minutes she’s got Beca pinned to the bed.

“I give, I give!” Beca wheezes, trapped as she is with Chloe sitting on her stomach, hands holding Beca’s wrists firmly on either side of her head.

Chloe grins evilly. “Good.” She releases Beca’s wrists, though makes no move to let her up.

Beca’s now-freed hands gravitate to Chloe’s sides, thumbs stroking gently at the skin just under her shirt. Even after a week of casual touches, Chloe’s brain stutters at the motion. Four years of spy training parade through her head, preaching in a voice that sounds eerily like Aubrey’s the dangers of her current situation. Chloe closes her eyes against the jumble and when she opens them again it all vanishes at the sight of the girl beneath her. And it’s the way that Beca is looking up at her - affection, and trust, and maybe a hint of something more - that causes the words to tumble out of Chloe’s mouth.

“I love you.”

And she’s startled to realize that she means it.

Ten months with Tom, but she falls for Beca Mitchell in a week.

Beca’s eyes are wide, and her hands slide up Chloe’s sides to pull the redhead’s mouth down to hers. Her kisses are deep, frantic, seemingly full of everything she can’t say just yet, and Chloe responds in kind, biting down on Beca’s lower lip. One of her legs slips between Beca’s, and Beca groans softly, hands traveling downwards to slide into the back pockets of Chloe’s jeans.

Chloe stiffens, and Beca pulls her mouth away from Chloe’s, brow furrowed anxiously.

“Is this- ”

Chloe nods vigorously, leaning down to suck at Beca’s pulse point, and Beca lets her head fall back against the pillows, fingers tightening to press the length of Chloe’s body more firmly against her own.

Still on top of Beca, Chloe sits up - pausing for a moment to admire the purple now blossoming against the side of Beca’s neck - and tugs her shirt over her head. For a moment, she’s nervous - because, while they've spent the past seven days making out and falling asleep tangled together, they haven’t actually done _this_ before. But Beca is swallowing _hard_ and she’s pulling her hands out of Chloe’s pockets to drag her nails lightly up Chloe’s sides, stopping just short of turquoise lace. Chloe shivers, stomach muscles tightening at the sensation, and she grins when Beca’s eyes flick down to her abs.

“Like what you see?”

"Maybe." Beca flushes slightly.

"I mean, I _am_ pretty confident about all this."

“You should be.” Beca’s normally stormy eyes have darkened to navy, and her gaze as it travels slowly up Chloe’s body is practically tangible. The pure desire in her eyes by the time they reach Chloe’s sends goosebumps skittering down Chloe’s arms, and she leans down to reattach her lips to Beca’s. Her fingers fumble with the buttons on Beca’s shirt and she drags her mouth down the other girl’s neck to press sloppy kisses to each new inch of exposed skin. Beca’s fingers tangle in Chloe’s hair, blunt nails pressing into Chloe’s scalp, and one of her thighs comes up to press firmly between Chloe’s legs.

Chloe gasps sharply, breaking her lips away from Beca’s chest as she finally gets the last buttons undone and Beca’s shirt falls open. For a moment, she pauses to appreciate the view beneath her - Beca’s lips are swollen, a truly impressive hickey now fully formed on her neck, and a flush has spread across her chest to disappear under the black cotton of her bra. One side of her mouth quirks up, and Chloe realizes she’s been caught staring. She winks.

Beca’s eyes are dark, fingers dancing along Chloe’s sides, but she still manages an adequately sarcastic eye roll as she drags one hand up Chloe’s spine, tugging her mouth insistently back down. Chloe grins into the kiss, tongue sliding across Beca’s lower lip, and she works one hand under Beca’s back to unhook her bra before sliding both shirt and bra off her shoulders. Beca gasps against her mouth when Chloe palms her breast, thumb flicking her nipple experimentally, and then her own hands are scrabbling against the fastening of Chloe’s bra until they’re equally topless.

Chloe closes her eyes when Beca’s endlessly-moving fingertips trail around to her chest, exhaling heavily into Beca’s cheek. Temporarily distracted, she barely notices Beca’s heel hooking around her leg; the brunette flips them with a surprising amount of grace, and suddenly Beca’s hovering over her, body braced against one arm as her other hand makes its way over Chloe’s chest and across her stomach.

Beca bites a pattern of hickeys down Chloe’s neck, and Chloe actually _moans_ when lips close over her nipple, sucking until her back arches and her nails carve angry lines into Beca’s shoulders. Beca pulls her mouth away from Chloe’s chest with a soft _pop_ , looking up at the redhead. Chloe imagines she must appear about as far gone as Beca - mouth hanging open, pupils blown wide - and then Beca’s fingers are fumbling with the button on her jeans and slipping downward and Chloe lets her head fall back against the pillows with a gasp.

And Chloe comes apart around the fingers and tongue of her sworn enemy, hands tangled in Beca’s hair and Beca’s name on her lips.

\--

The door bursts open with such force it hits the opposite wall and bounces back. Chloe groggily disentangles herself from Beca, clutching the sheet to her chest as she sits up and blinks at the light streaming in.

Silhouetted in the doorway is a figure that she would know anywhere, and never has Chloe been less excited to see her best friend.

“Chloe-- What--” Beca’s voice is thick with sleep, and she leans over to flick on the lights, freezing at the now-illuminated scene before her. “ _Fuck_.”

“Chloe?” Aubrey sounds exhausted, and her tone is heavy with betrayal. Now that the room is lit, Chloe can see Emily and Stacie hovering anxiously behind her.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Chloe tries, horribly aware of her current state of undress; of Beca’s similar state beside her; of the fact that she’s just been caught _literally_ sleeping with the enemy.

Aubrey shakes her head. “Don’t even start.” She turns to go, pushing past the other two, but pauses in the doorway. “I just--” And Chloe knows her well enough, has held her hand through enough botched missions, enough ex-boyfriends, to recognize the choked quality to her voice - the one that signifies she’s holding back tears. She’d never imagined it would be because of her. “If you decide to come to your senses, you know where to find us.” She disappears without a backward glance, leaving behind a shocked Stacie and a stricken Emily.

“Jesus, Chlo, I hope it was worth it.” Despite her harsh words, Stacie’s expression is sympathetic. Chloe inclines her head slightly, then turns to Emily.

“I’m so sorry, Chloe,” Emily says immediately. “It’s just, we’ve been looking for you for a week, and Benji told me where you were, and they were so _worried_ , so I thought--”

“It’s okay,” Chloe cuts her off gently. “It’s not your fault, you did the right thing.” Emily nods, though her face is still twisted anxiously.

“I’m coming back,” Chloe says, now directing her words towards Stacie. Not daring to look at Beca. “Promise.”

Stacie tightens her lips in recognition before disappearing out the door after Aubrey, one arm wrapped around Emily’s shoulders.

The second the door shuts behind them, Chloe collapses against Beca’s side, burying her face in the other girl’s neck.

“Hey,” Beca says, running a hand down Chloe’s arm soothingly. “It’ll be okay.”

“No it won’t.” Chloe can feel tears sliding down her cheeks and pooling in the dip of Beca’s collarbone. The shattered expression on Aubrey’s face seems to have etched itself into the backs of her eyelids. “I have to go.” And though it’s possibly the most difficult thing she’s ever done, Chloe wrenches herself out of Beca’s embrace and, without looking at her, begins searching for her clothes.

After a moment Beca joins her, the two of them dressing in silence. Chloe tugs on the white blouse and plaid skirt that have spent past week neatly folded in the corner, untouched (she wouldn’t let Beca burn them). The familiar clothing feels strange against her skin, like putting on a previously-favorite jacket that doesn’t quite fit anymore, stretching just a bit too tightly in some places and hanging loose in others it never used to. She ignores the sensation, the thought of Aubrey and their friends spurring her on.

“I’ll get Jesse to take you back,” Beca mutters when they’re both dressed.

“Okay.” Chloe tries not to look at Beca for any extended period of time, afraid if she does any resolution to leave she currently has will fly out the window. She makes her way through the warehouse with Beca trailing half a step behind her; when she reaches the door to the garage, she turns to face her fully for the first time.

“I texted Jesse - he’s waiting for you in the car,” Beca says, directing her words to the wall behind Chloe’s head. Chloe tries to ignore the fact that Beca is wearing her shirt.

Chloe nods, lips twisting with regret. “I guess I’ll see you around, Becs.” She turns, reaching for the doorknob.

“Wait.”

Beca reaches out, grasping Chloe firmly by the wrist and tugging her back, and Chloe ruefully notes the parallels to their first kiss. Except this time their roles are reversed, and it’s Beca asking _(begging)_ her to stay.

Beca’s free hand curls around the back of Chloe’s neck, pulling the redhead’s mouth down to hers, and Chloe can taste the desperation in the sweep of Beca’s tongue, the harsh press of her teeth against Chloe’s lower lip. She’s not sure if the tears on her face now are hers or Beca’s, though she suspects it’s both.

“I love you,” Beca chokes out.

And Chloe’s resolve very nearly breaks as her heart shatters at the look on Beca’s face. She wraps her arms around the smaller girl’s shoulders, pressing their foreheads together, and now she’s sure the rapidly increasing moisture on her cheeks is from both of them. For a moment, she considers what would happen if she _did_ stay. And then her best friend swims again to the forefront of her mind, making her decision for her.

“I love you, too,” she whispers against Beca’s lips. And pulling out of Beca’s embrace upstairs had nothing on this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment, kudos, etc (i'll love you forever)  
> come yell at me on tumblr @ queerpeggycarters


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